Tag Archives: revenge

Savage Streets Savage Streets 2 stars

February 1st, 2013 by surlaroute

Tags: , , ,

This is kind of movie where you know exactly what the next scene will entail when a gym class ends with “okay girls hit the showers” – and not in a plot-moving, semi-tasteful way like Carrie. I’ll admit the teenage boy inside me was perfectly fine with that. I wanted to see this for Linda Blair, of course, and all the artwork I’ve seen for it over the years has been spectacularly 80s-tastic in the worst way.

The plot concerns Blair’s deaf sister who is raped in the gymnasium while Blair is busy having a cat fight in the locker room, followed by Blair’s revenge on the boys who did it. Tone-wise it lies almost directly between Born Innocent (in which Blair played the victim) and The Accused, which says just about everything about early eighties cinema at its worst. Tastelessness aside, however, the bad music and styles etc didn’t let me down here – there’s a great moment where one of the rapists gets run down by a car which, as an IMDb boarder wrote, is a lot like the henchman in Austin Powers who gets run over by a steamroller… sadly I read that before enjoying the pleasure of making the connection myself.

Taken [2008] Taken [2008] 4 star

September 6th, 2010 by surlaroute

Tags: , ,

Somehow I missed this one on its original release but read many comparisons to it in reviews of one of my early favourites of this year, Edge of Darkness, so I was quick to check it out when it appeared on TV. In light of how much I liked Edge, I have to admit I wasn’t too open to this one being anywhere near as good, which I guess is just the opposite situation to those who avoided or dissed Edge for being “just another Taken…”

I was kind of pleasantly surprised. There’s a brevity to the introduction of characters prior to the total disruption of their lives here that I just adored. We see Liam Neeson dithering over a karaoke machine in an electronics store, making sure it’s absolutely the right one, then we see him giving it to his daughter at her 16th birthday party – but not before Famke Janssen, her mother, gives him sh*t for being a bad father, which he evidently is not, and though the daughter appreciates the karaoke machine, she’s quickly distracted by her new stepfather, who has bought her a pony. A simple shot of Neeson looking dejected after this scene is all we need to care about him (and anything he might care about) for the rest of the movie. The wraparound story here concerning the daughter’s ambition to sing (and Neeson being a bodyguard at one point to one of her idols) is just a little corny, it has to be said, but I kind of settled into it like a nice blanket around the otherwise awful brutality of the rest of the movie.

The rest of the movie is comparable to Edge of Darkness, not to mention a dozen other movies before both of them (I’ll throw in Trade as one you might not have seen) – but it’s one of those stories that, as long as it’s done well, never really gets old. The good news here is that with Liam Neeson in the lead (even if he’s just playing Liam Neeson yet again), this is most certainly done well. I didn’t find his anger quite so convincing as Mel Gibson’s in Edge, or to pick one of those dozen others, Denzel Washington in Man on Fire, and the action doesn’t sting quite so much either. But at 90 minutes who’s complaining. If you like this genre you’ll have no problems with this one.

Edge of Darkness Edge of Darkness 4 star

July 20th, 2010 by surlaroute

Tags: , , ,

It’s odd that I didn’t realise just how much I wanted to see this movie until long after its initial release.

I watched this following that second underwhelming viewing Shutter Island pretty certain I would enjoy it more, and it hooked me fast. This is a movie that launches quickly, with a gutwrenching moment between Mel Gibson and his screen daughter that made me jump out of my skin in such a way I’m not sure I’ve done since the car crash in The Forgotten. Let me say now, I’m increasingly easy pleased when a movie can still do this to me, and this one managed to do it twice in its duration.

Because of how powerful these moments of the movie were for me, it’s hard for me to talk about the story because I’d hate to spoil a similar experience that might be waiting for others. In short, this is mostly a conspiracy thriller, concentrated mainly on a kind of revenge story for Gibson’s character. If you liked him in Ransom or Payback, you will love him here, because it’s that Mel Gibson and in light of his own well documented real life personal problems (to say nothing of his latest tirade: I watched this a while before all that came out), it’s even more intense than ever in this movie. At one stage he seethes at someone, “I’m the guy who’s got nothing to lose and I don’t give a sh*t!” and boy, do you believe it. Fortunately, if being so raw onscreen again was any kind of gamble for Gibson at this stage, I feel confident in saying it pays off hugely. I personally loved (if that’s the right word) every minute of this movie – it goes as far as I believe all movies of this kind need to, with a broad corporate conspiracy line and a deeply personal cause, with Martin Campbell giving equal weight to the emotional side as he does the action – but what I’m sure no one will deny is the power of Gibson’s performance.

It was only midway through the movie that I remembered reading/hearing/being told that it was based on a 1985 BBC series which intriguingly was also directed by Campbell. I loved the idea of the story, and the idea of a director remaking his own work, so much that I got hold of and watched the entire 1985 production immediately (over a couple of days) after the credits rolled on the Gibson movie. The thing to note by comparison is that they’re really very different productions, and I find myself now I’ve seen both loving each in starkly contrasting, but equally passionate, ways. The TV series runs to nearly 6 hours. The story is very slightly different, and the flow simultaneously calmer, more procedural, but (in the last episode particularly) actually ultimately that bit crazy and surreal. I would definitely recommend the TV series to anybody who liked the movie, but I imagine it’s even more pertinent to recommend it to those who don’t like the movie at all… the TV version might be exactly what you’re looking for. Me, if I had to choose… I would have to pick the streamline plot and sheer rage of the movie… I’m not a hateful person, but when it’s so pointed and heightened as this, I can really go for it, and this one really had me rooting for the vigilante.

Swimming with Sharks Swimming with Sharks 4 star

May 19th, 2010 by surlaroute

Tags: , ,

I’ve seen this film countless times now but not in a long time before today, when I finally took in all the extras and commentaries of the amazing special edition DVD that was released a while back. It’s kind of odd I never got round to writing anything about it on this site, ‘cos it’s easily one of my faves.

What’s interesting is how differently I view it now from how I viewed it the first time, when I was only 15. Almost creepily ironically, it was among several things that cemented my desire back then to work in movies. Yes – I saw myself as perfectly willing to endure the kind of treatment Guy is subjected to if that’s what it took to be in “the business”, lol. I saw a kind of “future me” in Guy, right from early on when he talks about why he wants to be involved in movies even at such a low level, because all his memories are of movies… and in that sense, at least, I still really feel for him. Basically, though I loved the heck out of the movie, I kinda didn’t get it. It’s also worth noting that while watching it today I realised it was probably a contributing factor to my taking up smoking around that time. They do make it look like a pretty cool habit.

But back then, I was still in school, I had never worked, and it was not only easy but much more acceptable to dream. Watching today, having been in a rather crappy job for over 10 years, from the moment Frank Whaley screams at Kevin Spacey “SIT. THE FUCK. DOWN.” I couldn’t help but feel like “oh… I recognise this…”

That’s not to say the film isn’t still almost joyous in its darkness. I find my loyalties shifting from character to character here more than any film I can think of off the top of my head. Kevin Spacey’s studio exec Buddy Ackerman is a loathsome prick, it can’t be denied, but Spacey imbues him with something completely irresistible in what I think is probably one of his best performances – and worst of all, like the best villains, a lot of what he says makes sense… like at the end when he interrupts Guy’s “I spent a whole year…” “And I spent TEN, DAMMIT!” He tells Guy he “earned this”, and it’s hard to argue. Whaley’s Guy is all to easy to sympathise with, especially like I said if you’ve ever had a crappy job, but when Spacey is in full swing, you can’t help but side with those who say at various junctures in the movie to him, “Walk away!”

The movie is structured, like a lot of things post-*Pulp Fiction* it must be said, in that “it doesn’t need to be all mixed up like this but it makes it feel cooler” way but simultaneously you can’t help but compare at least the opening to Sunset Boulevard – hard to elaborate on that without spoilers, but if you know both movies you’ll know what I mean. What I’m saying I guess is that the structure isn’t entirely just for show… and it does add a definite air of mystery to the proceedings.

My favourite little detail that almost sums up the whole inescapable feeling of the movie is the title cards illustrating the time past. They start innocently enough as Guy starts his job working for Buddy… “Day One”. You mightn’t even notice when the second one comes up exactly what’s going on, when a card comes up saying “Week One”. But you might get it when “Month One” and “Year One” come up. This is a Guy who’s going nowhere, in a system that pretty much counts on it, and the more you can relate to that feeling, perhaps, the harder it will hit, and the more you might find yourself enjoying the revenge sequences. The ending is horribly hollow though, and kind of leaves us all as guilty as each other, whether we frowned or revelled in how it all went down. George Huang says in his solo commentary that he wasn’t necessarily saying anything with this movie, offering no solutions or endorsement of or to any of the behaviour shown, but simply holding a mirror up. If there’s anything wrong with the movie it is just that lack of conclusion as another “Day One” card comes up. It just goes on and on, a nightmare without end. But that somehow makes the movie special too… horribly special.

The Lovely Bones The Lovely Bones 4 star

January 7th, 2010 by surlaroute

Tags: , , , , ,

I was surprised by the emotional path I took through this movie after hearing such a widespread lacklustre response to it elsewhere. I’d been looking forward to it for a long time, since it was announced perhaps, just the idea of Peter Jackson doing a) anything on a “smaller” scale than the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and King Kong and b) something that sounded so tonally like one of my favourites of his, Heavenly Creatures. I was slightly annoyed when Saoirse Ronan was cast in a role that sounded to me (though I hadn’t, and still haven’t, read the book it’s based on) perfect for Dakota Fanning – I don’t even know now if that was a real rumour or wishful thinking from me, lol – in any case, subsequent viewings of Atonement warmed me to her as an actress.

The story’s a simple one, kind of Ghost meets What Dreams May Come: a young girl is murdered and views the aftermath from an “in-between” place between earth and heaven, both her and her family unable to move on. Thoughts of revenge are entertained, the girl able to a point to “touch” the real world and send signals to her father in particular, a boy she fell in love with shortly before the incident, and a fellow schoolgirl who has a kind of sixth sense. The movie deals with grief, loss, and moving on quite beautifully as well as adding (I’m told it’s been added in the adaptation process, anyway) a suspenseful thread of the attempt to identify and bring to justice the killer, played quite frighteningly well by Stanley Tucci.

I gave the movie 4 stars at The Auteurs site immediately after the credits rolled but thought of it as a high 4; however the more I think about it, the higher I think that should have been, I feel I’ve been affected by the strange quantity of negative reviews when I can really see nothing wrong with the movie. There’s a turn the story takes at the end where I felt the ending was going to be crushingly unsatisfying, but even that is fixed (hard to explain without spoiling things). I would put the negativity down to it merely being a bad adaptation and that all these negative opinions are coming from fans of the book but it seems too widespread for that explanation… am I the only person who saw the movie but didn’t read the book?

Maybe it’s that people measure Peter Jackson’s work now with a larger scale. I’m certainly one who tends to compare a great artist’s work with what has come before and rate relatively, but one has to remember that in addition to Heavenly Creatures and The Two Towers, he also made King Kong and The Frighteners, both of which this far outweighs. Maybe it’s just that there have been so many great movies and “must-see” movies in the past year and this one drew the short straw. It goes into my favourites, anyway. Saoirse Ronan is phenomenally haunting in the lead, the visual effects used to portray the in-between a really pleasant surprise (it’s not really much “smaller” in these sections than we’re accustomed to from Jackson lol), and there are other notable supporting performances from the likes of Rose McIver (a Power Ranger, I’ve just read, making her all the more impressive here!) as the girl’s sister, a quite mesmerizing turn by Rachel Weisz as her mother. It is a beautifully haunting, sad, yet ultimately strangely uplifting movie that I look forward to seeing again, perhaps after reading the book. I really don’t understand the underwhelming response elsewhere.

Inglourious Basterds Inglourious Basterds 5 star

November 18th, 2009 by surlaroute

Tags: , , , , ,

This was another incredibly pleasant (if that’s the right word) surprise. I wouldn’t say I’ve exactly gone off Quentin Tarantino as a director but my initial approach to his films has become increasingly apprehensive since Kill Bill. I thought Kill Bill was perfect in every way, but when the Grindhouse thing came along I thought at first, no that’s taking the Kill Bill “thing” too far … though, of course, Death Proof grew on me with subsequent viewings (at the very least, sitting next to Planet Terror as it does, it appears to be some kind of masterpiece …).

Inglourious Basterds seemed like it was going to have even more problems for me as a viewer. The first being – though of course Tarantino has been planning this movie for over a decade – we’ve had two of these Nazi revenge stories very recently in the form of Defiance and Valkyrie so by now the “genre” almost seems old hat. The difference with Tarantino’s version, however, is the highly fictionalised way his story of WWII turns out. That in itself, however, while others whose reviews I read seemed to revel in the delight of seeing that part of history end the way we may all wish it did, really didn’t interest me so much. Call it the first surprise, then, how “into it” I found myself as the explosive finale goes down.

Second was a similar problem to that I expected to have with Valkyrie – and I loved Valkyrie, so I should’ve have been so concerned. It’s really some of the casting that worried me here – seeing actors like Tom Cruise in Valkyrie or Brad Pitt and worse, Eli Roth, here in period costume, especially in this stylised, fictionalised version of the time, really didn’t look to me like it would work even a fraction as well as it ultimately does. There’s an almost cheeky moment in the very first scene (or “Chapter”) of Inglourious Basterds that seemed to me like a reference or jab at the way Bryan Singer segued into having all his “Germans” speak English for 95% of Valkyrie. Here, a character literally just says to another character that his knowledge of the language they are speaking (French) has been exhausted, does he mind if he switches to English? It’s a clever moment, but it’s ultimately surprising just how much of this movie’s dialogue still needs subtitles, with all dialogue being spoken in the language that makes sense for the scene, and that to me is a Good Thing. Anyway, not for one moment did I have the issues with Pitt and Roth that I expected. For Roth in particular it may in fact be his best-cast role yet. I still don’t like to see him on the screen, I’d much prefer him get behind the camera again … but for this particular character, that works. The Basterds themselves, in fact, don’t occupy as much screentime as you might expect, with as much time given over to Mélanie Laurent and Jacky Ido’s story or the brilliantly wicked Christoph Waltz as the movie’s principal villain. So even if you still find Roth and co. unpalatable, there’s plenty more in the ensemble to get excited about.

Then there’s the soundtrack. Though I’ve never had a problem with Tarantino’s use of music, it’s again an aspect of his work that I’ve worried about more with everything since Kill Bill, where it seemed to me he had pushed it as far as it would go. There was the comment he made about this movie in particular that struck me as particularly arrogant, when asked about his use of archive music, that he didn’t want another artist making a mark on his work. (“I just don’t like the idea of giving that much power to anybody on one of my movies,” LA Times) All of that said, it is hard to think about these things when the movie is in front of you and the likes of Ennio Morricone are serenading your ears. There’s little to say but that what music he uses works … even the Bowie. The only moments where I questioned the soundtrack, in fact, were two short snippets of tunes he had previously used, in Kill Bill, but they’re really too brief to mention.

This is, simply, a terrifically made movie that works almost flawlessly, and I think you’ll find that hard to deny even if you disagree with the idea of it. There are those who still think of Tarantino as some kind of manchild who makes fanboyish movies that serve no purpose than to fulfil geeky fantasies and there’s plenty in all of his recent work including this that matches that description. But there’s too much here – more than ever before in his work – that shows a real artist’s hand. It’s too technically proficient and assured to be dismissed as the B-movie wish-fulfilment it might first appear to be. To be perfectly honest, I’m almost inclined to agree with Brad Pitt’s last line which I’m sure is pretty much Tarantino speaking for himself, and he should be so proud: “This might just be my masterpiece.” On a first viewing I find it hard to disagree, for it truly blew me away.

Unforgiven Unforgiven 5 star

January 20th, 2009 by surlaroute

Tags: , , ,

“I guess they had it coming.”
“We all got it coming, kid.”

It’s certainly not as tight as the more recent clutch of Eastwood’s films (excepting Flags and Letters perhaps) and it was probably for that reason that I still remember the first time I saw this movie, bored out of my mind at the age of 17 or so, wondering just why it was considered in so many circles so brilliant. The last time I saw it was on DVD so I’d guess I was early 20s and it was a different movie entirely – maybe the novelty of DVD made me give it that little bit more time but I’d like to think I plain just “got it” more that time.

This might be only the third time I’ve seen it in my life, and it’s a changed film again. I’ve certainly seen it few enough times to always forget just exactly what the story is – I remember an element of revenge, and I remember the powerful message about violence, but I forget the parts Morgan Freeman, Richard Harris and Gene Hackman have to play in it all; I forget the astonishing depiction of the group of women the story revolves around – I was reminded of that camaraderie to be found among the bank girls of Dog Day Afternoon for some reason, just so real in the way they stick by one another and their fearless “leaders”, (in Dog Day, the way the manager opts to go back into the bank despite having the opportunity to escape; here the woman yelling back at the people throwing rocks through the window in protest at their actions).

I’m still struck by the slightly plodding nature of it in places – yet I’m struck by it only because I can’t fathom, in spite of this slowness that would normally turn me off a movie (see Revolutionary Road most recently), why I find myself glued to the screen, catatonic-like, to Eastwood’s completely arresting chunks of film. Here is a film set over a hundred years ago; made almost 20 years ago; but it feels utterly present even as it glows out of a 28” widescreen in the corner.

Again rooting around for someone else’s words to describe this sense I get from Eastwood’s movies (boy, I can’t wait to work through the fistfuls I haven’t seen yet), I turned to Roger Ebert’s review of this movie and found them:

“Not a boring montage of quick cuts and meaningless violence, but a story told through deliberate strategy, in which events may not be possible, but are somehow plausible.”

(lol … Changeling, Million Dollar Baby anyone?) My italics on the deliberate strategy – I think that’s the key to all of Eastwood’s work … he just always works methodically through a particularly muddy issue and emerges with something every time that, though he does address the tricky grey areas, is nevertheless absolute about where he stands; more’s the point, convinces you to side with him. I really think I might be in agreement with others on this one – the guy has made a ton of great movies, but this one is just something else.

Let The Right One In Let The Right One In 5 star

January 12th, 2009 by surlaroute

Tags: , , , , , , ,

The good news to me here was I got to see this one quicker than last year’s rave reviewed foreign horror movie [Rec], lol. I did approach it more apprehensively however – my response to all the “best vampire movie ever!” quotes was pretty much, “yeah, sure … because of course every new genre movie released in the past few years has to be immediately the best of its kind,” lol.

Well, it turns out, never mind those comments .. because if this isn’t at least one of the best vampire movies, it’s certainly one of the best young love stories I’ve seen. I wrote the previous sentences before taking a gander at the movie’s IMDb message board (where the boffins reside, don’t you know ;-) ) hoping to find some kind of outraged mention of “the crotch shot” that genuinely took even me aback here, only to discover that in fact what you see appear to be scarred genitals indicating that the (cute! cute!) Eli might, as in the novel, be a boy afterall – there are vague exchanges here and there about “her” gender. What it comes down to in the end, I think, is after 200 years, does it really matter? And y’know what? This makes it an even more beautiful love story to me.

In any case, all I can say right now is this movie ultimately took my breath away, I literally didn’t want it to end and when the final scene closed, I just couldn’t wait to see it again. I’m still uncomfortable with the phrase “best vampire movie ever” because it’s such a peculiarly broad sub-genre – the phrase just doesn’t seem like high enough praise to me on the one hand, and on the other, just doesn’t seem to mean much at all. It’s one of the best horror movies I’ve seen, certainly, and like I said, it was the romance that truly slayed me. The music plays along with this, blending from gripping strings to a tender piano theme.

Yes, it does kinda seem like at last we’ve hit another one of those, “gush, gush, I’ll think about it later – loved it, bye!” reviews on this one, lol. Sometimes I find myself faced with my ridiculous queue of movies to watch and end up doing nothing because I can’t make a decision; then there are movies like this that, as soon as the opportunity arises, I truly drop everything for. The Fall fell into the same category tonight, but this was the one that truly satisfied.